Friday, June 29, 2012

Ronald Reagan once said that tyranny is only one generation away. It is now every 4 year Presidential election cycle away, and the economic implications are staggering. Why have other ostensibly free market societies never measured up to the titanic wealth-creating achievements of America? Why did America explode with economic success in the second half of the 20th century while at the same time bank-rolling the free world’s defense? Look no further than our Constitution’s guarantee of liberty. The parliamentary democracies do not offer a business or individual planning horizon longer than the term of the current government which in most cases is between 4 and 6 years. The prospect for a tyrannical regime ready to confiscate wealth and private property is always a possibility at the next election. Entrepreneurs must guard capital instead of investing it and not waste their personal investment in time, talent, and skill. Nations without the rock-solid foundation of institutionalized Liberty can and will steal the fruit of private enterprise.The essential element that has given longevity to America’s spectacular ability to create wealth has been the multi-generational guarantee of a society free from tyranny and the confiscation of wealth and property. This guarantee was assured as long as respect was paid to that great gift, the crowning achievement of the Enlightenment, the culmination of the genius of Locke, Montesquieu, and Madison, the Constitution of the United States. Thank you, Constitution, for two hundred and twenty-five great years. May you rest in peace.

We now live in what Mark Levin, the great legal scholar, has termed “post-constitutional America”. The Supreme Court decision on health-care has conferred unrestrained confiscatory power on the federal government. Private property is now secured or imperiled one presidential election cycle at a time depending upon the inclination of the incumbent. We have become a nation whose ability to create wealth and happiness is subject to the same whims of electoral fancy as the unstable parliamentary democracies.

In post-constitutional America it is up to the people to affirm the notion that government derives its just powers from them and not from some leftist, faculty-lounge theoretician. With this court decision every city, county, and state, along with your body, has been nationalized. It is therefore essential to bring the national fight home to every level of government and insist on deference to individual liberty and private property rights. There is no more free-riding on the Constitution. Every judge, commissioner, mayor, council member, and soon your local death-panel appointee’s national political identity is now crucial to their ability to effectively represent you in compliance with our American traditions of Liberty. Insist on disclosure. It matters.

It may take another constitutional convention to restore long term institutionalized freedom to the nation. For the moment we must trust in Providence and carry the fight four years at a time.

For weeks now I've been reading opinion pieces from lefty pundits, reaching new heights of hysteria as this week approached, proclaiming that 5-4 Supreme Court decisions are a catastrophe. They undermine the "legitimacy" of the high Court, don'tcha know. Now, all of a sudden, 5-4 decisions are just fine. Wonder why?

While we're on the subject, why is the Court's "legitimacy" never an issue with the big decisions that liberals like: banning prayers in schools, setting criminals free because a cop made a mistake, or Roe v. Wade? Just asking.

Interestingly, yesterday's ruling upholding the Obamacare Tax is like an inverse Roe v. Wade. Roe got the policy outcome right, by means of what even liberal legal academics admit (quietly) was a pathetic travesty of legal reasoning. Chief Justice Roberts's opinion on the health law was mostly an exquisite piece of legal reasoning, my lawyer friends say, but it produced a monstrosity of a policy outcome.

Anyway, if this was what Roberts needs in order to be comfortable doing the right thing in future rulings, so be it. We've got a big one coming up next year, giving the Court a chance to outlaw racism in college admissions by means of preferences given to members of favored ethnic groups. The Court's likely to get that one right. Justice Thomas famously put a "15¢" grocery sticker on his Yale diploma, to illustrate what he says is the stigma of a degree attained in the era of affirmative action. He'll write a great decision.

Thursday, June 21, 2012

Rep. Kathy Hochulwon't attend the Democratic National Convention, to try to distance herself from President Obama. Neither will some other vulnerable Democrats running for re-election this year. But can they hide their support of the President's policies?

Tuesday, June 19, 2012

"We're still the second-highest in terms of the cost of doing business in the United States, second-highest in state and local tax burdens, and many publications rank us the worst for economic outlook. For all the positives that have been done in the last year, we really haven't done anything except hit the brakes on the runaway train."

This is not to detract from Governor Cuomo's heroic efforts, but rather to illustrate the magnitude of his task.

Monday, June 18, 2012

Monroe County Legislators made a mistake last week in enacting a "cyberbullying" bill that appears clearly unconstitutional. It's surprising they didn't recognize this before embarassing themselves.

The mistake was in criminalizing certain kinds of communications. Our legal consultant, Algonquin Bonapart, Esq., explains it this way: "This represents an attempted restraint on speech based on its content. The textbook paradigm of legislation violating the First Amendment's speech clause. First-year law school stuff."

This law will be overturned when challenged. The legislators should have had legal advice when they considered it. A Republican-majority body, like our county legislature, should stand against any restrictions on free speech. In the marketplace of ideas, we win. Which is why the Left often uses any trick available to suppress speech from our side -- from crying "racism" over something they disagree with, to intimidating sponsors of conservative radio hosts. Republicans and conservatives shouldn't be creating precedents for suppressing speech.

You can sue for defamation, but in America you can't go to jail for it. County legislators might have recalled the advice most of us received as children, when taunted by other kids: Sticks and stones can break my bones, but names can never hurt me.